Letting Go

I have very few memories about my grandmother Mercedes. I remember her kind smile, her calm aura, the fact that her kisses felt sloppy on my cheeks. Granddad and granny lived next door, in the house that my grandfather Nemesio built a million years ago.

We would sit outside in the big patio during hot summer nights in Sardinia, and the grown ups would talk about their day, or play cards. They would talk for hours, until it was late and time to go to bed. Battisti's songs about peach blossoms would be distorted by the old radio, still managing to engrave that moment and provide the perfect backdrop.

The adults would talk about the family business, they would talk about the town's gossips or what they would cook that weekend. This is what we did back then. I was four, perhaps five, and I would sit on my mother's lap and listen, or fall asleep like children do. The dogs would sit around us as well, and listen carefully.
Pomegranates would grown red on trees, and the breeze would smell of sea and countryside.

Mercedes wore cheap dresses with dark floral patterns. Her skin was pale because of her anemia, her hair dark with shocks of grey - held together in a tight knot - like pictures from the 1800's that you see in antique shops. She was barely 60, but back then people looked much older after a life of war, work, sickness, Mussolini and the stupor that people back then must have felt to see the world change so much in their lifetime. She had also survived through malaria, because the disease still existed in Sardinia until the 60s, or something like that.

She was a quiet woman with a dry sense of humor. She would find people falling on the street hilarious, and she loved taking the piss out of people, herself and life - in that respect she was just like me.  She had a silent determination and kept the whole family together through that gelling that only mothers seem to be able to do. We all liked her : once I emptied my mother's fridge to bring over all the food cause granny had mentioned that she did not know what to cook that night.

Big Sunday lunches with all the uncles and cousins somehow managed to overcome the dramas and tribulations that small town people manage to create for themselves. From outside, from the eyes of a child it all looked like simple happiness looks like. The dark pink flowers on the porch seemed destined to grow in peace.

I was thinking about Mercedes the other day, about the last time I saw her. It is after all one of my very first clear memories - I was six. She was going to the hospital for the operation she would never come back from.
Her pale skin seemed to disappear in the glaring early September sun and the dark pink of those flowers.

She was so tall, and I was so small. She gave me one of her kind smiles. It is bizarre, but that moment I felt that we both knew that that was the last time we would see each other.

She gave me a kiss, said goodbye and then whispered in my ears something I have never forgotten but I have never told anyone. It was something about letting go. She put it in such a clear way that a six year boy could get it and a thirty one old man still remembers it after so many years.

Then she went, never to return again - just leaving behind her ghost to appear every now and then to remind us that the past is like spilling olive oil on the kitchen floor.

Apple&Apricots Christmas Cake

I made this last night and it was a Christmas cake of dreams......

• Preheat the oven at 180C.
• Butter a circular cake tin (usual size).
• In a container put 4-6 halves of apricots (canned in syrup), 1/2 cup (like a coffee mug) worth of the syrup, 1/2 a lemon juice, a bottle cup of dessert wine (like marsala), 2 apples cut in in slices, a spoon of tricle, a spoon of sugar, 1 spoon of cinnamon and 1 spoon of nutmeg. There should be enough liquid/spices to cover all the fruit - if not add a bit of syrup/spices.
• Beat 3 eggs with a cup of sugar until fluffy.
• Add 1/3 of a butter pannier and 2 spoons of extra virgin olive oil - beat until fluffy; 
• Add the zest of 1 lemon - keep beating;
• Add 1 mug of vanilla yogurt - keep beating;
• Add the juice from the fruit- keep beating until all ingredients have been mixed thoroughly;
• Slowly add 2 1/2 to 3 mugs of self rising flour, carefully beating it in. The cake mix has to be soft but not runny.
• Pour the mix in the tin, cover with the apples and apricots (the fruit has to cover the whole top of the cake);
• Put in the oven (same temperature) for about 35-40 minutes (start checking after 30 minutes) - the cake is cooked when you can put a knife through it and it comes out clean/mostly clean.
• Let cool before eating.

One Year On

Next week we are going to celebrate one year since our flight from Buenos Aires to Sydney took us here on 16th December 2010.

Whilst the flight's path took us through the fringes of Antarctica I remember looking outside the window and thinking that my life felt a bit like that alien world: it looked so peaceful from the outside, but the terrain ahead was going to be possibly treacherous and unexplored. That feeling was both exhilarating and terrifying.

I was wondering the other day how our lives have changed over the last year - what are the biggest takeaways from the beginning of this new chapter.

One of the first feelings that came to me was on the same line of that time I jumped off a plane during my travels: the pleasant surprise when you accomplish something outside of our comfort zone. It turns out the path was not treacherous - just very unexplored.

I am chuffed about the life we have managed to create for ourselves: it is fabulous. Australia feels like the right place at the right time. And not just personally - with the world's epicenters slowly shifting towards Australasia being here really feels exciting. Strangely one of the most remote places now feels like it is in the middle of the action. When I was growing up Australia was a fabled land people like me never visited - having built a life here with Tatz and being in the process of buying our first home over here makes me feel proud.

The other feeling that came to me was the realisation that this year has been strange in many ways - there has been a lot of sorting things out. It was like going to the supermarket and shop for a intricate recipe.

Someone has recently pointed out to me how life is made of small segments - a concatenation of things and stuff that we do, we think, we plan. This year has largely felt that way.

These things included finding jobs (and once found getting comfortable in them), hunting for flats, building a new life, discovering a healthier side of us, etc etc.

It turns out that buying a flat is a job by itself! Seriously, could anyone make the process any more complicated to the naive and unaware First Time Buyer?

Perhaps for the first time I have not thrown myself into a new million things and I just allowed myself to slow down.

Perhaps this is the first time that I have allowed myself to stop since I applied for that government scholarship 14 years ago and I embarked on that weird and wonderful journey that has taken me from a small town in Sardinia all the way to the fringes of Antarctica. It has been great, but so exhausting. I gave all of myself to this during my 20s.  It was quite fitting how the circle closed when I turned 30, and in the same year another cycle started off.

So I reckon this is the biggest takeaway: Sydney has given me space. Space to stop rushing for a while. Space for The Rat to buy all those ingredients with his tuberous companion. This period was necessary and now I feel a bit like I am coming out of hibernation.

As I come into a new year I feel my soul is more peaceful. I feel ready for the new year and pretty excited because there is a lot I want to do.

I am happy here doing the things and stuff that I am doing.

Down Our Bay

You saw the submarine down our bay?
I thought it was an island, but it's just iron,
the moon light on its surface seems too bright,
the sea under its weight just seems to struggle -
like hopes that linger silent on the smooth waves.

It's not the first deceit that this sky brings us,
it's not the first time things sound strange tonight -
whilst life reveals its plans and its next chapters
it all feels kind of peaceful, kind of right.

One year has passed and those familiar shores
have started to feel exotic, almost unreal,
the final night - the rain drops at the Chapel,
are only half exposed under the haze.
Like something which you fear might just go and fade.

And whilst the two of us walk down the Exchange,
and Darlinghurst outside doesn't know us,
I think this year may feel like a surprise,
just like this submarine down our the bay.

Fair Go

Over the last few months I have started picking up glimpses of revelations around the Australia's psyche - some of the key building blocks that make up this society. Australia is such a fascinating place, and I don't think that people like me really get how incredible and interesting this place is until we stop a second and think about it.

The country as we know it was 'discovered' (I am not going into the whole aboriginal issue here) in the later XVIII century. Now, let's face it: once you take out all the time that it took to start colonizing the place properly and turning it into a developing Western- style society we could probably argue that things really kicked off in the late 1800s.  This makes this place seem even more recent to European standards than it really is.

Whilst lots of people see this almost as a fault and the reason behind an alleged lack of culture and all that rhetorical blah blah blah, I see it as a big opportunity. Whilst our legacy helps us describe who we are, it also represents societies' weakest point. Just like a company that has to deal with old IT systems, that determines to some extent what can and cannot be done, societies can be crippled by their history and their legacies.

As I see it Australians' psyche reflects this position. One of the key things that I have picked up is that Australians are very keen about the concept of 'Fair Go'. This is actually more intricate than it sounds, so I'll have to simplify. Fair Go is giving an opportunity to honest people to make a good life for themselves. When I went to the museum of immigration in Melbourne it was pretty interesting to see how a lot of the campaigns aimed at getting the English over revolved about 'giving their children a better future'. A Fair Go. That concept has evolved, but not died.

If you couple this with the constant reinforcement of the 'hard working Australian' image, a country where farming and 'the land' are still predominant, the feeling that since you are so remote you need to put in twice the effort,  you get a place that is the closet I have seen to the romantic New World image and that has given birth to great intellectuals, scientists, actors, travelers and athletes.

I will give you an example. Whenever an Australian actor makes it into Hollywood without fail the interview by Australian press will contain the question :'So how are Australian seen in Hollywood?' and the actor will say 'They like us because we are down to earth and hard working'. I kid you know, Australians love this.

The concept of 'Fair Go'  also means that modern Australia value meritocracy and simplicity. Also it means that the concept of class in Australia is somehow loose, and there seem to be a massive middle class and the upper class keeps somewhat a low profile (more on this in a future log).  

What can I say? There are my impressions, so Terms & Conditions do apply.

Growing up with Berlusconi

I was 13 when Berlusconi came to power in Italy, after a colorful campaign revolving around the promise that his party Forza Italia would create one million jobs. There were a lot of blue banners and catchy jingles.

Back then people wanted to believe that one million jobs could be created, as well as we wanted to believe that Italy was in fact the 6th largest economy in the world.

Berlusconi was already one of the most powerful people in Italy, as he owned significant part of the media and a number of lucrative businesses. During his campaign Berlusconi traveled a lot of the country - a bit of a poor's man American president election campaign. I guess people liked him. One of the reasons must have been the fact that he was a business man who had actually accomplished a lot, rather than just talking about it. There was fluff - there always is in Italian politics, but behind the fluff there were results. Even if these results he had been achieved for himself, they were still results. That appealed to the Baby Boomer society.

What we might have failed to see is that Berlusconi was indeed a great achiever, however like many great achievers his desire and drive was more rooted in the selfish pursuit of self validation than a genuine care for the country he was supposed to lead. Someone who tries to change the law in preposterous ways to escape persecution himself is certainly not driven by selfless principles.

That is no news: Italian politicians have carved a delightful little niche for themselves over the decades...They come to power and there they stay, until like defeated geriatrics dinosaurs cannot do it any longer.  They seldom resign, never mind how insane the scandals they get involved into - or how detached from modern life they become because of their reverend age. There they stay. Whilst their international counter parties step down over what to Italians seem to be minutia, there they stay.

In Italian we say that they are glued to their armchairs.

They don't care. Inside their bubble they are powerful, untouchable, they are beautiful, they frolic with attractive young girls, they are politically incorrect, they are above the law, they are rich....In a word the own the country. The reason why they are so powerful and the normal people are so powerless is simple: there is no such a thing as meritocracy in the country.

I remember being more than shocked when I won my government scholarship for boarding school. In fact, everyone I knew was shocked that a nobody like me could have such a lucky break, beyond the corruption, the favours and the crap that go with anything that has to do with the government. It was like a small miracle, a Deus Ex Machina moment that allowed me to transcend my own destiny.

Meritocracy is a foreign word in Italy, where merit is carved through obscure networks and where power is like some sort of golden inheritance which is passed among a finite number of families and names.
So the dinosaurs stay up there, while the rest of the people wine Nietzsche's retaliation theory- style, alas they do nothing to drive change. The don't do anything partly because the dinosaurs don't care - there is hardly a scandal which is big enough to overthrow them.

Hard to agree that this is a First World country - more like a Third World Country which has been pretending to be evolved. The legacy of a great past has become a crippling baggage of self destruction. If you go to countries like Argentina, beyond the beauty of the country you recognize the same underlying issues that have taken Italy to the place it is now - well Argentina is full of Italians after all.

Berlusconi represents all the reasons why I have left my own country and why I would not live there again. In Italy I feel like a cripple, I feel like half the man I can be. I feel the weight of the dinosaurs, the weight of that baggage of self destruction. I feel powerless.

Italy was a disaster when Berlusconi took it over. I was 13. Now I am 31 and things seem to be pretty much the same, which makes things worse.  So whose fault is it? Is it Berlusconi, for making the most out of it, or is it the Italians' for doing nothing about it for the last 18 years? I do not know. What I do know is that the country is so entrenched on this journey that 'more of the same' is not the answer.

I wonder why the EU countries do not police each other more intensively - why don't premiers provide independent oversight to what happens in other countries? Each premier could be allocated a country to monitor. And by independent oversight I mean real scrutiny of policies and progress against them, not just summits. Independence is the only thing that can cut through the bullshit, through legacy, through the 'we have always done it this way'. If you don't get a person that is not part of that roundabout of crap to see through the crap and identify and address the real issues in a timely manner, you will only end up with yet another horror story.

I was 13 when Berlusconi came to power in Italy, after a colorful campaign revolving around the promise that his party Forza Italia would create one million jobs. There were a lot of blue banners and catchy jingles.

That's why I only smiled

[Feb '09]


I wanted Revolution but I got Silence.
Perhaps my penitence was blatantly insufficient.
I reached out to the memories
of tense-less strident verbs
and perfectly round rocks on a free fall;
I did it to recall
the elusive consistence
of long lost strange philosophies,
of my anarchy.

You thought I would have made it,
you thought I'd do the things I promised to you that day
on a cliff path.
You see, I could have made it,
I guess it was too tough to play that part.
Perhaps I could do nothing,
that's why I only smiled:
I knew I'd drift apart.
And hence my Revolution became Silence,
and hence I am left here wondering if I have lost.

The next phase is slowly nearing.
I fear the cost to pay
to honour such a role.
These things demand a miracle, and strength beyond my own,like excellence requires a restless soul.